Tricking Fate
by J9
Summary: Grissom thinks about the tricks fate can play on people (Grissom-Sara, Warrick-Sara)


**Title:** Tricking Fate

**Pairing:** Sara/Grissom, Sara/Warrick

**Disclaimers:** Not mine. 

**Spoilers:** Nothing in particular

**Notes**: For the LiveJournal Multifandom1000 trick challenge. 

***

I never believed in fate until I met Sara. 

And even then, I thought that fate was trying to trick me. After all, I made a choice at a very young age that love, relationships, were not for me,  that I would never allow what happened to my mother to happen to me. She and my father were, by all accounts, very happy during the first few years of their marriage, the first few years of my life. Then disaster struck, because she began to lose her hearing. My father, not being able to handle the thought of living with such a disability, elected to leave us both, and I can still remember my mother crying herself to sleep at night, the look of despair that lurked in her eyes. 

I've always been afraid that if I let someone into my life, the same thing would happen, so it's something I always resisted. I dated, but nothing serious, and I believed that I was choosing my own fate. 

Then I met Sara, and I knew from the first moment of contact that if there was such a thing as fate or destiny, then surely she was mine. A woman just like me, in career choice, in temperament. 

A woman who was much younger than I, a woman with her whole life ahead of her. 

A woman who cared for me as much as I cared for her.

It would have been so easy to reach out and pull her close, and I know we could have been happy together. But I also knew what could happen if I let her lost her, and I knew I would. Because she was a young woman, who would surely want children, children that I could never give her. 

Because much as I would love a child, especially a child with Sara, that child would have a better than fifty-fifty chance of developing otosclerosis. 

I could never put either of them through that. 

So I did what I had to do, pushed her away. Even though it hurt her, even though she had it rough for a while, I had to do it. I watched her from afar, watched her find her feet, watched her make a new life for herself, watched her dating. 

Even managed to smile for her when she began dating Warrick. He's a good man, good for her, a man who could give her everything I couldn't; love, family, children. 

That's what I wanted for her, you see. Everything. 

Sometimes, I would look at her, wondering "What if?" but I didn't let myself do that often. Sometimes, I would catch her looking at me the same way, though that may be wishful thinking on my part. Because I knew she was happy with Warrick, or at least that's what I thought. 

Until three weeks ago when they broke up. 

Lab gossip swiftly had it that Warrick had proposed to Sara, that she'd turned him down. What lab gossip didn't have was the reason why, and it was a tense two weeks between them until the night that they arrived into the lab hand in hand, told us all that they were getting married. 

Everyone wanted to know what had happened, but no-one asked. I only found out today because Nick was teasing her at our crime scene, about the wedding and beyond. After a questioning glance at me, which I responded to with a grin, she took it with good grace, until, that is, he mentioned children. 

Then her smile faded just slightly, though her voice was light when she told him that it wasn't going to happen. There was something in her voice that set off alarm bells with me, but not with Nick, who blithely continued, "You say that now…"

"No, Nick." There was something in her voice that stopped Nick in his tracks, had him looking at her curiously. I was looking at her the same way, and she must have seen that, because she sighed, looking down. "I can't have kids," she told us, speaking slowly, rolling each word around in her mouth slowly. "It's a… uh… medical… condition… I've always known."

The words caused my stomach to drop, my blood literally running cold, because I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Sara…" Nick sounded shocked, sympathetic. "I'm sorry… if I'd known…"

"It's ok Nicky," Sara told him with a sad-looking smile. "I've had a long time to get used to the idea." She shrugged. "It just sucks right now… because you know Warrick and kids… and I can't…" 

Her voice trailed off, and Nick jumped in, nodding his head as if he'd just worked something out. "That's what you two were fighting about last week."

"He proposed… which was a surprise. And I told him no … and then I told him why. He spent the last two weeks convincing me that kids aren't a deal breaker for him." Her cheeks flushed pink at that and Nick laughed. 

"Guess he finally managed to."

Sara turned away from us, but not so quickly that we didn't see her scarlet cheeks. "He says there's nothing we can't get through together… and after two miserable weeks, I decided he was right."

"You guys will be fine," Nick told her, turning back to his own work. "You're the strongest couple I know."

That was the last word on the subject, and if they noticed my silence as I considered my reasons for not starting anything with Sara, contemplated the irony of the situation, they didn't comment on it. 

I thought that fate was playing a trick on me, introducing me to a woman who was perfect for me, a woman I could never have; that by not starting a relationship with her, I was tricking fate right back. 

Turns out the joke's on me. 


End file.
